


Key to Grace

by Wolfling



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-18
Updated: 2010-11-18
Packaged: 2017-10-13 06:50:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/134229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolfling/pseuds/Wolfling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When everyone's favorite trickster archangel comes back to life minus the angel part, Castiel is talked into helping Gabriel retrieve a relic that could help him get his grace back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Key to Grace

**Author's Note:**

> This is my second Supernatural Reverse Big Bang fic and I think I was pretty much destined to write for this art prompt. It was one of my original choices and when it was still available when second claiming opened up, I couldn't resist picking it, even though I was rather daunted by the idea of writing two big bangs.
> 
> Best. Decision. Ever.
> 
> I have had _so_ much fun writing this, I can't even begin to tell you. And the artwork that Satavaisa did for this is amazing and gorgeous and I love all of it. I can only hope that my story lives up to her pictures. To see all the artworks she did for this you can go [here](http://satavaisa.livejournal.com/20160.html).
> 
>  
> 
> Also, thanks to Omphalos for betaing this for me, while she was getting artwork ready to post herself. I appreciate it, hon.

Later on, Castiel would blame the whole thing on being too curious. Things would've been a whole lot simpler if he had just ignored the unusual prayer when it had come.

But he hadn't. It was not every day that a pagan god sent a prayer up to Heaven, and to him in particular. Especially a pagan god who had many reasons not to think fondly on angels and was known to bring new meaning to the phrase 'fiery temper'. So when Kali had called for him, Castiel had been... intrigued.

Curious.

They say curiosity killed the cat, but it didn't really do much good for newly minted archangels either.

He told himself he was only going to check it out because it could possibly be dangerous and something he should know about in his efforts to keep Heaven in order, but the truth was that the idea of visiting Earth and maybe having something new and interesting to deal with held lots of appeal.

He sighed. There was a reason why there was a curse invoking interesting times.

"Are you just going to stand there sighing like a over-dramatic teenager?" his companion asked.

"I hardly think that I have to worry about anyone accusing me of being the one that's overly dramatic when you're in the room, Gabriel," Castiel replied, watching as Gabriel ran his hands over the stone wall opposite them. He appeared to be searching for something, or possibly trying to read braille.

"Point," Gabriel acknowledged. "I am known for having all kinds of flare. It's part of my charm."

"Charm would not be the word I'd choose," Castiel told him pointedly. He paused. "What are you doing?"

"Looking for the secret switch that will release the door." The way Gabriel said it made it clear that he thought it was obvious.

Castiel tilted his head and observed the small stone room they were currently trapped in, thanks to the Enochian sigils etched all around its boundaries. "And what is your plan if there's no switch?"

"What do you mean 'if there's no switch?'" Gabriel glanced behind him, giving Castiel a look of disbelief. "There's always a switch. Don't you watch any movies? Don't answer that. Of course you don't. I tell ya, Dean really fell down on the job of teaching you the important things about humans."

Castiel was starting to lose the thread of the conversation. It wasn't an unfamiliar sensation, as it seemed to happen at least half the time he talked to Dean, but it was a little more frustrating when it was coming from one of his brothers. "What does watching movies have to do with switches or getting out of here?"

Gabriel was stretched up on his tiptoes, searching the wall above his head. "Oh nothing, except that all the good ones that involve quests for ancient artifacts always have clever traps in them. And the traps always have even cleverer ways out of them. And default switches. We just have to... Aha!" He grinned and turned to glance over his shoulder at Castiel. "Found it. Now watch this!"

Gabriel pushed the stone, and it depressed about an inch into the wall. There was a low rumbling sound and Castiel followed Gabriel's expectant gaze to the blocked doorway. So it took him a few seconds to realize that the ceiling was now slowly descending.

"I don't think that was the switch you were looking for," he said mildly.

****

 **24 hours earlier....**

Castiel landed in the middle of what looked like a cross between an ancient temple and a luxurious boudoir. There were a lot of reds, many reminiscent of blood, used in the décor, which conjured up the feeling of a massacre. The weapons that were hung on the wall as decoration just added to the effect. From what he knew of Kali, it was a fitting combination.

There was no one in the room when he materialized, but it was merely seconds later when Kali -- in the form of a beautiful Indian woman -- entered through the curtained doorway opposite where Castiel was standing.

She looked him up and down, and Castiel could not help the vague sensation that he'd been found wanting. "You're late," she told him in a low, calm voice, but with an undercurrent of violence for those who had the power to hear it.

"I did not realize I was on a schedule," Castiel replied, watching the goddess move across the room to pour herself something to drink from a crystal decanter of.... he hoped it was red wine at least.

"I was getting tired of listening to him try to be entertaining," Kali replied mysteriously, taking a drink and licking her lips afterward.

"Him? Who?"

Instead of answering, Kali stared at him for a long moment. "I don't like your kind. You run roughshod over everyone else and take your family squabbles out on the world around you. You've caused far more trouble than you're worth and destroyed far more than you can ever repay, even in blood."

Castiel, of course, was aware of what Lucifer had done to the pagan gods. "I'm sorry for your losses," he said.

"I would have lost far more if he hadn't intervened," Kali said. It did not take much effort to figure out that she was talking about Gabriel. "I bound him by blood and tried to kill him, and he gave up his life covering my escape. This creates a debt. I do not like being beholden to anyone." The irritation in her voice was such that Castiel had to fight not to take a step backwards, and it was not even directed at him.

"I'm sure Gabriel would release you from any debt if he were able to," he told her.

Kali glanced back at the curtained doorway she had come through, the corners of her mouth turning up very slightly. "While extolling his brave and ultimate sacrifice and trying to bed me. Yes, I know."

"Come on, Kali," a voice from the other side of the curtain drifted. "It's not like you haven't thoroughly enjoyed my charms in the past."

"I had a moment of weakness," she replied. "It's long gone now."

"That's what your mouth says, but your eyes..." The speaker slipped through the parted curtain into the room with a leering smile on his lips. "Well, what your eyes are saying isn't fit for mixed company."

Kali's expression did not change one whit. "Unless it involves dining on your entrails, you're reading them wrong."

"And ruin your lovely handiwork here? We both know you're not going to do that. Not after all the effort you've put into bringing me back alive and kicking.."

"Gabriel?" Castiel heard himself saying.

Gabriel turned his attention to him, smiling widely. "Hi bro! Thanks for coming, really. I wasn't sure you would."

"You were dead." It was, of course, stating the obvious, but Castiel felt in desperate need of getting the facts straight before things spun out of control. They had a tendency to do that around the archangel.

"I was," Gabriel replied. "But I was lucky enough to have a powerful goddess in love with me-"

"Only in your delusional dreams," Kali interrupted, but it didn't even make Gabriel pause.

"-who happened to have me bound in a blood spell when I died. She brought me back."

"Do not make me regret doing so."

"Oh, Kali, baby. When have I ever made you regret anything?" Gabriel asked, spreading his arms wide and giving her what Castiel was sure Dean would call 'puppy dog eyes'. Kali's brow furrowed, and she opened her mouth, but Gabriel quickly backpedaled, "Don't answer that."

"Then don't ask stupid questions," Kali commanded.

Castiel spoke before Gabriel could dig himself in any deeper. "Kali called me here at your request? Why?"

"I could've called myself, I know," Gabriel said, turning back to him. "But y'know, Heaven and all.... I wasn't sure my calls are still accepted back home, so figured it was better to play it incognito and work through an intermediary. Besides," he grinned, "I don't know too many beings in existence who would be able to resist answering Kali's call."

"I was... curious why a pagan goddess would be seeking me out," Castiel admitted. "But I would have answered you as well." After everything that had happened, Gabriel was the one archangel that Castiel thought still worthy of the name, even if he was more than half-pagan in his outlook now.

"Yeah, well," Gabriel shrugged. "Didn't want to take the chance."

"Gabriel requires your help," Kali said. "I have done my part in restoring his vessel and his Loki persona. I have called you here to aid him with the rest." She turned back to Gabriel. "My debt is paid."

Gabriel gave a genuine smile and reached out for her hand. "You never really owed me a debt, Kali. But I appreciate the helping hand. Being dead was a huge honking load of nothing. I won't forget what you've given me bringing me back."

Kali's expression softened a miniscule amount at that. "I did not want you haunting me for eternity. At least this way I can lock you out of my bedroom."

"And I'll just pick the lock," Gabriel teased, smiling wider.

"Go," Kali told him, a touch of fondness in her tone. "Take your brother and seek what you are missing. We can fight it out later."

"See? I knew you couldn't resist me." Gabriel waggled his eyebrows at her. "I look forward to it, mon amour."

Kali gave a long suffering sigh, pulled her hand free of Gabriel's and disappeared into the room beyond the curtained doorway.

Gabriel stared after her for a moment, still smiling appreciatively. "I tell ya, bro, that woman is fucking amazing."

"She is... impressive," Castiel agreed carefully. "She said you required my help?"

"Yeah," Gabriel said. "Kali's great -- and she did her best with the resurrection gig. She healed my body, got the systems working again and brought back my essence just like she would be able to any other pagan god she'd blood bound. But there's one thing she couldn't recreate or reclaim."

"Your grace," Castiel said in realization.

"Exactly," Gabriel said, pointing a finger at him like a gun to emphasize the point. "That's a bit above even her pay grade."

"I'm sorry, Gabriel, but I fear it is a bit above mine as well. Our Father may have given me a new influx of power, but restoring an archangel's grace..." Castiel shook his head, daunted at the very idea. "I don't think anyone but Him could do that."

"And He's still off playing hooky," Gabriel confirmed. "Yeah, I know. If the freaking apocalypse can't get him to come out of hiding, restoring me certainly isn't going to be enough." There was a ghost of bitterness to Gabriel's voice, but not as much as Castiel might have expected, given the other's predicament.

"I'm sorry," he said again, meaning it. He'd been in Gabriel's position not that long ago, with his grace dwindled away to practically nothing. At least Gabriel apparently still had his trickster status; Castiel had been regulated to merely human. Still, it was a long fall from what Gabriel had been before, and Castiel couldn't help but sympathize. "If there was some way I could help..."

Gabriel gave him a quick grin. "As a matter of fact... Y'see, I'm not stupid. When I first left Heaven, I knew I'd have to find a way to hide my light under a bushel, so to speak, if I wanted to be able to stay gone. An angel just in human form sends out all kinds of alarms for those who know how to look -- not that I need to tell you this. You've done the flying below the radar thing successfully too. But that's why I chose to make my vessel from scratch and chose to take on the identity of a god instead of just a human. Gave me an excuse to have the aura of power I couldn't disguise.

"I try to plan ahead. If Plan A doesn't work, I like to have a plan B through Z to fall back on. My contingencies had contingencies. I was doing my best to rein in my power usage and keep it more in line with that of a trickster than that of an archangel. But I knew there might come a time when I'd need that extra juice, and I wanted to have a story in place if it ever came up. Plausible deniability, you might say. So I made a relic."

Castiel tilted his head to the side. "A relic," he repeated drily. Given everything else he knew about the archangel, that Gabriel would try to create something like that didn't really surprise him. That he seemed to be claiming he'd actually managed such a feat was another thing entirely though. The number of true relics in the world was a very small, very finite number.

But apparently he was being told it was greater by one more than he had known.

"Yeah," Gabriel said. "Took a lot of effort, but after making my own vessel, it wasn't an impossible feat. Just really, really difficult."

"How?" Castiel asked, trying to work out how it was even possible.

Gabriel shrugged. "I took some of my grace and fused it with this old key I found. Then I hid it somewhere that I was pretty sure no one would be able to get their hands on it, but where I could get to it in a hurry if I ever needed the plausible deniability."

Castiel was not stupid. He could read between the lines what Gabriel hadn't actually outright said. "You think because this relic holds part of your grace you'll be able to use it to restore yourself."

"Well, actually I'm hoping _you_ could use it to restore me to all my archangelic glory, but yeah, that's it essentially," Gabriel said. He looked at Castiel with something that might have been pleading in someone more humble. "What do you say? Will you help a brother out?"

"I should refuse you," Castiel told him. "You've used your power to do little but torment and play bad practical jokes on humans for millennia. This is not why our Father gave it to you."

"Hey, compared to a few other archangels I could name -- such as, oh, _all of them_ \-- I've been the poster boy for angelic behavior," Gabriel pointed out. "Which, granted, is saying more about my brothers than about me, but. I chose humanity's side in the end. Don't I get some points for that?"

"You do," Castiel said, trying to make it sound grudging. In truth, he gave Gabriel far more credit that he wanted to admit to him, or to anyone else really. Of the entire host, Gabriel was the only other angel who actively chose to fight for the Winchesters and humanity, instead of either Michael or Lucifer's sides. That decision made them kin in a way that merely being brother angels did not. He had already decided to help Gabriel in whatever way he could. But he wasn't above making him squirm a little first.

He deserved a little payback for what happened in Gabriel's TV Land, after all.

"What do I have to say to convince you then?" Gabriel asked, spreading his hands in a 'I'm offering you all that I've got' gesture. "Because I may not look it, but I'm kinda desperate here. I mean, it's great to be alive again, and a trickster's powers are better than nothing, but... It's not me. Not all of me anyway. Maybe not even the best part of me."

"That remains to be seen," Castiel said, but then relented and added, "All right. Give me your Grace Key and I will see what I can do."

Gabriel immediately burst into a huge grin. "I knew I could count on you. I won't forget this, Castiel, promise. If there's ever anything I can do for you..."

"I'm not certain that is a debt I'd be wise to collect on," Castiel observed wryly, but allowed himself a faint smile. "But we shall see."

"Any time. I mean it."

Castiel was noticing that, as much as Gabriel was singing his gratitude, he wasn't actually producing the relic in question. "You don't have the Key, do you?"

"Wellllll, not _exactly_ , no," Gabriel said, still bright and enthusiastic, but starting to prevaricate a little. "But I know exactly where it is. Sort of."

If Castiel had been given to be more expressive with his face, that would have had him raising his eyebrows cynically. "Sort of?"

"It's in a place that isn't really a place," Gabriel said. "Well, it is, obviously, but it's not just a place you can fly to. There's ways and ways you gotta go to get to it. But I know where the entrance is."

"I thought you said you had secured it somewhere you could lay your hands on it quickly," Castiel reminded him.

"I did! But... uh... it got moved."

"Someone found your excellent hiding place, you mean," Castiel translated.

"Yeah. And since I didn't really need it at the time, it was easier to just keep tabs on it than to start a whole," Gabriel waved a hand negligently, " _thing_ over it. If you think human international conflicts are bad, you don't want to see what cross-pantheon disagreements can turn into, believe me. I left Heaven to get away from the fighting, remember?" He shrugged. "I figured as long as I knew where it was, I could go grab it if I ever needed it. Phenomenal cosmic powers and all that."

"Which you don't currently have," Castiel finished.

"Yeah. Now they're just merely... amazing. Not the same thing at all. But it does make the retrieval a tiny bit more difficult than I was expecting it would be. But not impossible. Especially not with the two of us."

And there was the other shoe dropping, as Dean would have said. "You want me to come with you to retrieve your Key from wherever it is that you as a trickster can't get it from."

"It would make things a lot easier," Gabriel told him, looking encouraging. "Come on, Castiel. You've been back in Heaven for a while now; you must be ready for a break, aren't you? Don't you miss being down here and all the excitement and adventure?"

"I lost my grace and was exploded into small bits," Castiel reminded him. "Twice."

"Okay, but you got better," Gabriel said, for some reason with a horrendous attempt at an English accent.

"And that's not mentioning other unspeakable experiences. One that involved flying mon-"

Gabriel rolled his eyes. "Are you going to go through and catalog every bad thing that happened to you down here?"

Castiel made a show of thinking about it. "Just the ones that involve you somehow, I think."

"Fine. If I promise not to turn you into a flying monkey again, will you go with me?"

"Or anything else that you think is funny," Castiel added. "Especially if you think it's funny."

Gabriel started to nod then stopped. "Can I transform other people if I think it's funny?"

"Not the Winchesters," Castiel replied immediately. Because, really, he did not want to be in the middle of another such conversation between Gabriel and Sam and Dean.

"I suppose I've yanked their chains more than enough," Gabriel admitted. "Plus they should get a break after stopping the apocalypse. Fine. No messing with good old Sam and Dean."

Castiel made note of the fact that Gabriel had expanded the scope of the promise. "Then I guess it would be only prudent that I accompany you, if only to make sure you don't cause any sort of situation that it would fall to me to have to clean up."

"Oh, there's not going to be any situations. It's a little tricky to get at, but I don't foresee any complications. Just a short little relic gathering venture. No trouble at all," Gabriel said, grinning at Castiel as he raised his hand and added, "I promise. No trouble at all."

*****

 **Now**

"This isn't exactly what I'd call 'no trouble at all,'" Castiel felt the need to point out as he divided his time between watching Gabriel frantically run his hands over the stone walls and staring at the ceiling that was slowly but inexorably descending on them.

"Shut up," Gabriel told him. "It's not trouble yet. Just a minor setback. I'll find the right switch."

"If you don't find it soon, we're going to be smushed like grapes turned into jelly," Castiel told him.

"Very descriptive metaphor. But it won't kill us," Gabriel replied, frowning at a particularly strange rune and leaning in for a closer look.

"You say that like that would be a good thing," Castiel observed. "I rather my human form remain unsmushed."

Gabriel was completely involved in looking at the carvings. "There's something odd about this rune," he said. "It doesn't make sense in context here. Also it's drawn kinda wonky. I swear, if you squint, it almost looks like it could be a...." He trailed off. "Oh _hells_ , no."

"What?" Castiel said, moving over closer to see what so had captivated Gabriel's attention. The fact that he felt like he had to duck his head a little while doing so did not really improve his mood.

"This. It looks like an angel with a halo that's slipping off. Which means Lugh's figured out what I really am." He frowned. "I was pretty sure no one had me pegged until the Winchesters."

"Perhaps you weren't as well disguised as you believed you were," Castiel said mildly.

"Y'know, I'm going to feel like a _complete_ idiot if it turns out that my perfect disguise all these years amounted to everyone just _humoring_ me," Gabriel grumbled, crossing his arms in front of him.

Castiel glanced at the ceiling's slow but unstopping progress towards their heads. It was almost at Sam-height now. "Yes, could you feel like a complete idiot after you figured out how to get us out of this?" he asked pointedly.

"Oh, I've already figured it out," Gabriel replied, still standing there with his arms crossed over his chest, pouting. "But I can't do it."

That definitely had Castiel turning his head to stare down his companion. " _What_?"

"Lugh designed this to keep the riff raff out, but that, of course, didn't include me."

"Of course."

"But the sneaky SOB figured out who I really was -- at least that I was an angel -- and so keyed the system to that. Probably literally keyed since I bet he used my Key to do it. Very clever really. He was always good with finessing magic items."

Castiel fought the urge to shake his brother. " _Focus_ , Gabriel."

"We can't get out because Lugh's keyed it to the touch of an angel's grace. Which I don't have anymore," Gabriel explained.

Castiel cleared his throat meaningfully.

Gabriel rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I know you do, bro, but it's also keyed to the touch of a trickster. Which you're not. Like I said, it's very clever. Lugh's hit on the exact combination of requirements that only I could fulfill. It's just too bad I'm missing half of them right now. Sorry, Castiel. Looks like it's grape jelly time for us."

"Gabriel." Castiel was quite proud of the fact that his voice came out even.

"Yeah, bro?"

"Is there anything that would stop us from both touching it at once?"

Gabriel opened his mouth, then closed it without saying anything. Instead he grabbed Castiel's wrist and pressed both their hands over the same carving that had started the ceiling descending when he'd touched it before .

For a couple of long seconds, nothing seemed to happen; then with a loud grinding sound the ceiling slowed to a halt barely an inch above Castiel's head.

"It worked," he observed, letting out a breath of relief he didn't really need.

"I'm an idiot," Gabriel muttered. "I totally should have thought of that."

"We all have our lapses," Castiel said.

"Not me," Gabriel insisted. "Not like this. I'm more off my game than I thought."

Trust Gabriel to pick now to have some kind of existential crisis. At least he'd waited until after they had stopped the room from squishing them. "You've just been brought back from the dead," Castiel reminded him. "And you're missing your grace. Either of those would be enough to set anybody off-balance. Both together-"

"And I'm lucky I'm able to talk in complete sentences without drooling," Gabriel finished for him. "Yeah, I know. Still blows giant donkey balls though."

And Castiel had thought Dean's use of language overly colorful. "I'm sure it does. But it will get better. I'm equally sure of that. In the meantime, while I'm relieved that we are no longer facing a possible future as very, very short beings, perhaps we can work on getting the door to open?"

"Right." Gabriel went back to perusing the runes on the walls until he found what he was looking for, then called Castiel over with a crook of his finger. "Considering what's happened, I think it best if we continue doing everything together."

"Agreed." Castiel let Gabriel guide their joined hands to a rune that was slightly raised from the wall and felt it depress when Gabriel had them twist it just so. The low rumble noise promptly filled the chamber again, but this time, thankfully, it was the ceiling slowly rising back up to its original height.

When it had ceased moving again, Gabriel had them twist the lever in the opposite direction. "And... open sesame," he declared, timing the words to the sounds of another, different rumbling noise, this one being the wall at the far side of the room from where they came in slowly retracting.

"Still no way back," Castiel felt the need to point out.

"We don't need a way back right now," Gabriel countered. "Just a way forward. We can worry about the way back once we have my Key. Come on." He had dropped Castiel's hand and was heading for the new doorway. "Next stop Lugh's secret treasure vault!"

Castiel sighed and followed at a more sedate pace. It seemed that whatever crisis Gabriel had been having was already forgotten with a speed that should have been causing some kind of emotional whiplash, for one or both of them.

*****

 **Five hours earlier...**

"His name is Lugh," Gabriel said as he and Castiel drank their pints in the corner of the crowded pub. "He's one of the Tuatha Dé Danann."

"That explains why we're in Ireland," Castiel observed. "Though not why we're in this drinking establishment."

After Castiel had agreed to help Gabriel retrieve his Key, Gabriel had snapped them, trickster style to the center of a village square and then made a beeline to this pub, the _Fox and Badger_ , where he proceeded to order the two of them several rounds of drinks and refuse to answer Castiel's questions.

Until now at least.

"We're here waiting for it to get dark," Gabriel told him, then glanced out the window. "Darker. Moondark." Before Castiel could ask him why, he was already continuing on about Lugh. "He's a decent enough fellow for a god, a little bit full of himself and what he can do, but not really overbearing about it. For a god at least. And he's got a trickterish streak several miles wide when he turns his mind that way. We've always got along well. Or at least as well as two tricksters from different pantheons ever could."

"And he currently has the Key?" Castiel asked.

Gabriel nodded. "Lugh kinda has this thing for magical artifacts. They've saved his bacon more than once, and really, as keepers of these things go, he's definitely a step up from most guardians. I still don't know how he found the Key or even heard about it in the first place, but there are a whole lot worse people whose hands it could've fallen into." He paused to take a long drink.

"We were sorta friendly at the time, so I made a deal with him -- he could hold onto the Key as long as he kept it safe, and with the understanding that if I ever had need of it, he would hand it right over. Which he agreed to, and I agreed not to lay the smack down on his ass. He didn't know who and what I really was, of course, but I had a pretty bad-ass rep as Loki too, enough that he knew the threat would at least lead to a big mess, even if he was under the delusion that I couldn't wipe the floor with him."

"So we're sitting here, waiting for him to come and hand over the Key?" Castiel was unable to keep the skepticism out of his voice. He had hung around with the Winchesters long enough to know that things were never, ever, that easy.

Gabriel grimaced. "Not... exactly. I tried to contact him, of course, as soon as I realized that I'd need the Key if I wanted to restore my grace. He's not answering his calls. The metaphorical phone is going straight to voice mail and the inbox is full."

Of course. "How... surprising."

Gabriel shot him a look. "Y'know, you've got that whole deadpan sarcasm thing down a little too well, bro."

Castiel returned the look implacably. Again, it was rather amazing how much time with the Winchesters seemed to have prepared him for dealing with Gabriel. "Did you really expect it to be that easy?"

"It would've been nice if it had been," Gabriel said with a sigh. "Like I said, as gods go, he's a pretty decent guy, takes his oaths seriously. I'm not stupid, between the threats and 'here's what I'll let you do's, I made him swear an oath to hand over the Key if I ever asked."

"Which you can't do if you can't actually get in touch with him." It was, as loopholes went, a fairly large one.

"It might not be on purpose. A lot of the gods -- those that weren't crazy enough to try and take on Lucifer directly -- dove into a hole and pulled it in after them during the apocalypse. I'm pretty sure that  
got even worse after Luci's little massacre at Godcon. Lugh might just still be keeping his head down."

"He might." Castiel cocked his head to the side. "Though I believe this would be where Dean would try to sell you a bridge."

"I did that once," Gabriel offered, brightening. "Guy had spent a lifetime conning widows and orphans so I pulled one of the oldest cons on him and sold him the Golden Gate Bridge. I would've used Brooklyn, but it had been way over done, even back then. And then I had him get eaten by a couple of trolls who were squatting under the bridge. Real trolls too, not ones I snapped up. They owed me a favor." He sighed with a small, nostalgic smile. "Ah, those were the days."

Castiel thought he should've been more surprised by that than he was. "Are there going to be trolls involved in this?" he asked somewhat plaintively, telling himself he also wouldn't be surprised if the answer was 'yes'.

"Wasn't planning on it." Gabriel gave him a look implying that he thought Castiel's grip on sanity might have been dubious. "What the hell would we do with trolls in this situation? Besides they smell _horrible_ \-- troll hygiene is a complete oxymoron. Trust me, Castiel, you really don't want to involve them."

Castiel couldn't help but just stare at Gabriel for a moment. It was either that or 'facepalm' as Sam and Dean would have done. It seemed it took very little to get Gabriel off the important topic at hand, which might be a useful bit of information if he ever needed to distract Gabriel with something shiny, but at the moment was merely aggravating. "Yes," he said evenly. "No trolls. What are you planning on us doing?"

Luckily it seemed it was just as easy to get Gabriel back on topic. "If Lugh isn't answering his calls, I figure we can go knock on his front door. And if he still doesn't answer..." Gabriel here leaned in and gave Castiel a wide smirk that vaguely disturbed him. "Well, he stole the Key from me, turnabout is merely fair play."

As a plan it was lacking sufficient details, but at least, as Gabriel would probably be quick to remind him, it didn't involve trolls. "All right," Castiel said. "Where's his front door?"

"Not up on Irish myths are you?" Gabriel asked, grinning and taking another drink. "Where else would you find the Tuatha Dé Dannan but Tara?"

*****

 **Now**

Once they were clear of the entrance room, Castiel and Gabriel had found themselves in a long stone corridor with tapestries and various old school weapons decorating the walls between torch sconces.

"It's very.... quaint," Castiel observed mildly.

Gabriel snorted. "It's stuck in the middle ages. Don't ask me why, but when it comes to pagan gods, the Irish lot seem to be sticklers for period pieces. It's not that they don't embrace modern day conveniences, they just don't want to be seen doing so. Posers."

"Says the archangel who posed as a trickster for a thousand or so years."

Gabriel didn't seem the least bit phased or abashed about that. "Yeah, but I did it with _style_."

Of course he did. Castiel gave in to the sudden human impulse to roll his eyes and slowed to look closer at one of the tapestries. "The subject matter doesn't seem to be as period," he observed, strange as it was to see such modern day human inventions as planes, TVs and guns depicted in a medieval style of artwork.

"Like I said, it's not that they don't go out and embrace today's human technology and culture," Gabriel said, coming to stand beside him and poking at what looked like a cartoon rendition of a leprechaun and a bowl of breakfast food. "They just have to put their own, old school, flare on recording it."

Castiel nodded and started moving down the corridor again, Gabriel falling into step at his side. They continued on in silence for another ten minutes or so without the corridor seeming to change or come to an end.

"Gabriel?"

"Yeah, bro?"

"Do you have any idea where we're going?" Castiel wasn't sure there was an actual good answer to the question, but he still felt the need to ask.

"Course I do! More or less. I mean it's been a _really_ long while since I was here visiting, but I got the general layout all up here." Gabriel tapped his forehead meaningfully.

"Oh." Castiel felt that maybe he needed a bit more than that in reply and added, "Good."

After another ten minutes or so of walking with nothing changing but the tapestries, Castiel asked again, "Gabriel?"

"Yeah?"

"Will we be coming to the end of this hallway any time in the next century?"

Gabriel scowled at him. "Very funny. Oh ye of little faith. I told you I know my way around down here. We just need to find the right door to go through."

Castiel paused and looked at the walls that were featureless save for their decorations. "What door?"

Gabriel's scowl disappeared, replaced by that secretive trickster smirk that Castiel was already learning meant he should probably worry. "Now, what did I tell you at the entrance? It would be boring if the doors actually looked like doors."

*****

 **Two hours earlier...**

Castiel looked around them curiously. "It's the middle of a field," he observed.

"More or less, yep," Gabriel confirmed. "What were you expecting? A huge plantation ruled over by a woman wearing a dress made out of curtains?"

The strangeness of the comment made it obvious it was a reference to something, probably something else from pop culture that Castiel was not familiar with. "I was expecting a domicile of some sort, yes. I've no expectations on what the occupants would be wearing or what their clothes would be made out of."

Gabriel stared at him for a long moment. "When I get my grace back, we are going to give you a crash course in historic moments in cinema because this is beginning to get downright embarrassing." He walked over to a stone pillar in the middle of the field. "This here is the door."

"That's a stone monolith," Castiel pointed out.

"Well, of course it doesn't _look_ like a door," Gabriel said rolling his eyes. "If it did, every Tom, Dick and drunk archeologist would be wandering into the Tuatha's stronghold. Look closer, bro."

Castiel did so, opening up all of his senses to their angelic fullest. There was... something there. An energy of some kind, which he easily admitted to Gabriel. "It still doesn't look like a door, though."

"Because that would be boring. Lugh's a trickster, remember? We tricksters excel at making things look like anything but what they really are. Watch and learn, padawan." Gabriel walked up to the stone and, after a brief look at the runes carved on it, walked around it, touching each side in a different place, while muttering something too low under his breath for even Castiel to make out.

When Gabriel was finished, he stepped back to stand beside Castiel and looked at the stone expectantly. Castiel did the same, but for the longest moment nothing happened. Long enough that Castiel began to ask, "Are you sure you're corr-"

He was cut off by a rumbling sound, and the stone slowly sinking into the ground.

Gabriel turned and grinned at him. "Yep, I'm sure. Come on."

Conceding privately that Gabriel did seem to know what they were doing, Castiel joined Gabriel at the edge of the opening the sinking stone had revealed. It went down into blackness with no indication of what was inside.

"No stairs," Castiel observed.

"That's because most of the people who'd be using this entrance don't need 'em. Come on," Gabriel encouraged again, stepping right up to the edge. "The drop's not too far, I promise." And with that he stepped off the edge and disappeared into the dark hole.

For a moment Castiel stayed where he was and e briefly weighed his options. But he had said he was going to help Gabriel and abandoning him in the middle of whatever insanity he was courting seemed to be the exact opposite of helping. So he sighed, pulled his limbs in tight against him and stepped off, letting gravity pull him down into darkness.

*****

 **Now**

"That non-boring door led us right into a trap that almost squashed us flat," Castiel said.

"Yeah, but we got out of it, didn't we?" Gabriel said, waving the objection away. "And you gotta expect defenses at the entrances -- I mean who wants just anyone traipsing about their home? We're past that now."

"I wouldn't be so certain," Castiel warned.

Gabriel rolled his eyes. "Trust me Castiel, we're right on target. I know exactly what we're doing." He stopped in front of another tapestry, this one depicting a battle that looked much, much older. Standing in the middle of the forces that Castiel assumed the viewer was supposed to be rooting for (judging by the colors and the fact that the other side was depicted as decidedly demonic) was a tall, blond man dressed in Celtic garb from, Castiel guessed, approximately the ninth century. He held a spear that was twice as long as he was tall and seemed to be glowing with an inner light. All of his opponents were cowering back from the man and, in particular, the light of the spear.

"That's him," Gabriel said, startling Castiel out of his contemplation of the tapestry. "Lugh. And his magic spear -- man, talk about sexual symbolism in action. There's no way I can ever hear or tell any of the stories about Lugh using his magic spear without snickering."

"That's because you've always had the mentality of an adolescent human boy," an amused voice behind them said.

Castiel spun around, reflexively calling his blade to his hand, but Gabriel reached over and restrained him with a hand on his arm.

"Pretty much everyone who understands sexual innuendos snickers at the spear," Gabriel told the newcomer. "Not just me. Hello, Lugh."

It was indeed the same man who was wielding the spear in the tapestry, right down to the garb he was wearing. He smiled slightly at Gabriel. "Loki. It's good to see you again."

Gabriel snorted. "Yeah, pull the other one. If you really wanted to see me, you wouldn't have been ducking my calls so persistently."

Lugh spread his hands. "I've been busy. Really, Loki, sometimes a spade is just a spade."

"Yeah, and that's another thing," Gabriel said, crossing his arms over his chest. "You might as well stop with the Loki'ing. I know you know."

"Know what?" Lugh asked, wearing an innocent expression.

Gabriel rolled his eyes. "Who I really am, Numbnuts. And drop the innocent act, will ya? You pull it off even less well than I do, and that's saying something."

"Really?" Lugh cocked his head to the side. "I've always been told I'm quite good at it."

"Yeah, not so much."

The innocence was dropped in favor of an amused smirk that, in Castiel's eyes, was remarkably similar to one of Gabriel's. "Have it your way then," Lugh said. "Gabriel."

Gabriel looked completely at ease, but Castiel could feel how tense he actually was from where he was still holding onto his wrist. "Seeing as you've obviously known for a while, mind telling me what gave it away?"

"The Key," Lugh replied. "It's obviously yours, but it reeks of the power of Heaven. Did some discrete asking around after I acquired it, heard the rumors of the archangel who had gone awol and put two and two together."

"You always were the clever one," Gabriel observed, making it sound more like a fault than a compliment.

Lugh shrugged. "Takes one to know one. The trickster disguise? Quite ingenious and I say that speaking as the real thing. I doubt even I would have stumbled onto the truth if it hadn't been for the Key."

"Speaking of," Gabriel said, voice light and pleasant, belying how serious the topic was, "I need it back."

"I figured as much," Lugh said with a nod. "Sorry, no can do."

Gabriel's eyes narrowed dangerously. "What do you mean?"

"Just what I said. I can't give it back."

"You mean you won't."

Lugh shrugged nonchalantly. "Can't. Won't. Tomayto. Tomahto. Schematics. Comes down to the same thing in the end."

"Not really," Gabriel said, and the air of mischief that seemed to surround him as a matter of course had taken on a definite thread of menace to it. ""One, we work on the problem till it's solved, and the other, I work on _you_. Either way, it's going to end with me getting my Key."

"I'm trembling in my boots. Seriously." Lugh appeared anything but daunted by Gabriel's threat.

"You will be, and a whole lot more besides," Gabriel told him. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Come on, Lugh. Do we really have to do this? Don't make me regret letting you hold onto it all this time."

Lugh looked like Gabriel's words were affecting him, but he still shook his head. "I'm sorry but-"

"You swore an oath," Castiel blurted, causing Lugh's attention to focus on him.

"Who's this?" he asked Gabriel.

"My brother," Gabriel replied. "Castiel. And he's right. You did."

"Gabriel told me that you took your oaths seriously," Castiel said, meeting the god's eyes.

Lugh nodded. "I do."

"Yet you are willing to gainsay your word now. Break the oath you swore to Gabriel all that time ago. Is the Key really worth your honor?"

"The things that are worth my honor are a very, very short list," Lugh said, "and no, the Key is not on it." The faint ghost of a smirk touched his lips as he continued. "But I didn't give my word to Gabriel. I gave it to Loki. Who, it turns out, doesn't really exist. You can't make a promise to a being who doesn't exist. Ergo, I am not breaking my word."

Castiel shook his head. "Sophistry."

"Besides," Gabriel added, "you're making it sound like Loki's a figment of someone's imagination, but he's not. _I'm_ not. Okay, so Loki's not my first name. That just makes it an alias. And I'm pretty sure aliases still count for being the same person."

Lugh stared at Gabriel for a moment, then shook his head and smiled with a sigh. "I have missed debating with you, my friend. You're one of the few people who arguably has a more twisty way of thinking than I do. A compromise, then. We will leave it up to fate. You may stay and look for the Key. I won't stop you or try to impede you beyond Tara's normal defenses. If you are meant to reclaim it, you will find it. If it is meant to remain in my hands, you will not."

Gabriel glanced sideways at Castiel for a brief moment before turning back to Lugh, a faint, amused smirk gracing his face. "I've learned recently that fate is less pre-ordained and more what you make of it. And since I refuse to leave without what's mine, fate's going to end up coming down on my side, I promise you."

Lugh returned the smirk with one of his own. "That remains to be seen. I have business I have to see to elsewhere so I will leave you two to your hunt." With that he vanished in a bright burst of light that shot up through the ceiling.

"Show off," Gabriel muttered. He didn't look as angry as Castiel would have thought he would be given the circumstances.

"He wasn't as forthcoming as you had hoped," he observed.

Gabriel sighed and ran a hand through his hair again. "No, but he was exactly as contrary and irritating as I should've expected he'd be. He likes making people jump through hoops, the more clever the person, the bigger the hoops. That he finally has a chance to make _me_ jump through his hoops... well, I'm sure he's got a whole circus full of them ready for me."

"So you think he was planning on turning this into a game all along?" Castiel asked.

"Not only planning, but salivating over the details like a wolf with a piece of meat," Gabriel said. "Or Dean Winchester with pie. I tell ya, bro, he and I are going to have a realllllly long discussion once I get my grace back. Involving hoops, possibly on fire, but I won't be the one jumping through them."

"We should focus on finding your Key then," Castiel said, trying to bring Gabriel's attention back to the problem at hand before he got too far off track.

That was all it took. "Right." Gabriel looked up and down the hallway and rubbed his hands together. "The chances of it being in the most obvious place are either slim or none, but we should probably still rule it out. Besides, knowing Lugh, there may just be a clue there. So secret magic vault it is." And he was off down the hall leaving Castiel with no option but to follow.

When he caught up, Gabriel was standing in front of another tapestry, this one showing a rather large canine with glowing eyes and dripping jaws glaring out at them. Around the dog's feet were scattered bones, many of which were recognizably humanoid.

"A disturbing subject," Castiel observed when Gabriel kept staring at the picture.

"It's meant to be," Gabriel replied. "To keep people looking away and moving on before they can find anything."

"And have you found something?" Castiel asked, watching as Gabriel leaned in even closer, staring at, he realized, the spiked collar the dog was wearing and the tiny lettering in between the spikes.

"Maybe." Gabriel sounded distracted as he twisted his head to the side and stood on his toes trying to get a closer look. Castiel found himself leaning in closer as well.

Which meant when the dog's eyes blinked and a low rumbling growl filled the corridor that, angel or not, he jumped back.

"Got it!" Gabriel declared triumphantly and reached a hand out to touch the tapestry only it went _into_ it instead. "Told you there were doors if you knew where to look," he said, looking back over his shoulder at Castiel. "Come on."

He held out his other hand to Castiel, who, after a moment's hesitation took it. Gabriel grinned at him, then took a step forward straight into the tapestry, pulling Castiel with him. There was a brief moment of disorientation as they stepped inside, but when it passed, they were now standing in the middle of what had been the courtyard in the picture. Castiel glanced back over his shoulder, but there was no sign of the hallway they had been standing in. Only a closed and locked gate was behind them.

The dog's growling increased in volume at this invasion, but Gabriel only rolled his eyes. "Yes, you're big and fierce and scary. Excellent job at being a watch dog. I'd totally be crapping myself in fear if I hadn't met you before."

The dog stopped growling at that and sat back on his haunches, cocking his head to the side as he looked at Gabriel. "Really?" he asked hopefully in a perfectly normal voice. "I was scary?"

"Completely." Gabriel jerked his head in Castiel's direction. "You even made an angel jump and take it from me, that's not an easy thing to do. Fen would be proud."

"How is Fenris?" the dog asked. "I haven't seen him in a very long time."

"Truthfully, neither have I," Gabriel replied with what sounded to Castiel as a trace of wistfulness in his voice. "He had a rough patch a while back, but last I heard he'd got that all straightened out and is doing good now. I'll tell him you were asking about him next time I talk to him; he'll get a kick out of that."

The dog began wagging his tail at the promise. "It's good to see you again, Loki."

Gabriel grinned and stepped close enough that he was able to scratch behind the dog's ears. "Likewise, Failinis. Likewise."

He was still grinning when he looked back at Castiel and beckoned him closer. "Failinis, this is my brother, Castiel. Castiel, this is Failinis. He's palled around with one of my kids."

The entire situation seemed to be getting more surreal by the moment. "Hello," Castiel said gravely.

The dog -- Failinis -- nodded at him in return. "Hello. You smell weird."

"That's because he's an angel," Gabriel said.

Failinis cocked his head inquisitively. "You said he's your brother. Are you an angel too?"

Castiel was as curious as Failinis to how Gabriel would answer that. His casual nod and "Yep," was almost anti-climatic. It seemed he was already getting more comfortable with not hiding who and what he really was.

"But _you_ don't smell weird," Failinis said.

"I'm... a little low on angel mojo right now," Gabriel told him. "That's why I'm here, actually. That Key of mine that Lugh's been storing? I need it to help get my mojo back."

Failinis cocked his head in the other direction."Does it hurt? To be missing your mojo?"

"Honestly? Yeah, it does," Gabriel admitted. "It's a big part of who I am; it doesn't feel right to not have it." Whether he meant it to or not, the words carried more than a touch of heartfelt sadness and pain. No matter how well he seemed to be holding up, being without his grace was definitely taking a toll on Gabriel.

Failinis seemed to hear it too and was not unaffected. "You shouldn't hurt," he said and stepped aside, revealing the open doorway behind him. "Get your Key and use it to heal your mojo."

Gabriel gave him a real smile. "Thank you," he said simply. "I promise, anyone who asks, you were totally the most terrifying guard dog ever."

"I would greatly appreciate that," Failinis told him seriously. "Go. I believe your Key is on the third level."

Gabriel walked past Failinis and into the dark of the doorway he'd been guarding, and Castiel followed a step behind.

When it became clear after a few feet that the darkness was not going to let up, Gabriel snapped them up a couple of flashlights. The light revealed another long corridor, this one with regular alcoves off it instead of tapestries.

"Now that is a good dog," Gabriel commented when they were probably out of hearing range of Failinis. "I like him."

Though he had only seen him for a few minutes, Castiel was inclined to agree. "He seems possessed of some unusual abilities for a canine."

Gabriel shrugged. "You hang around with gods long enough -- especially a god who is obsessed with collecting magic items -- you're going to pick up an unusual ability or two. I'm sure Fen taught him a few tricks too when they met."

"Fen," Castiel echoed. "One of your kids." He wanted to ask about that, but was having a hard time finding a tactful way of doing so.

Fortunately, Gabriel didn't force him to ask. "You're wondering about that. About how I could have kids after what Dad ordered me to do to the nephilim and not be the worst hypocrite who ever lived."

"I would't have put it like that, but yes," Castiel said. "The question had crossed my mind about how you could bring yourself to... take that risk."

"It wasn't so much that I took the risk as had the risk thrust upon me. I didn't set out to have any of them, but when it happened, I can't say I tried to stop it. Okay, there may have been a little freaking out over Sleipnir, but that was for entirely different reasons."

"You care for them," Castiel observed.

"Care for them? I love them -- they're my kids! Family, and I really didn't have any of that down here." He glanced sideways at Castiel. "You get it, how lonely it is to be cut off from home, even when it's your choice."

Memories of how alone he'd felt when he'd been fighting his brothers to try and stop the apocalypse were even now far closer to the surface of his thoughts than he would like. "Yes," he said softly. "I get it."

After a moment's shared silence, Gabriel continued, "They're good kids, even if they're not what you might first expect. And technically, they're not actually nephilim since they don't actually have any human blood." He hesitated and glanced over at Castiel again. "I could introduce you to them when all of this is over. Y'know, if you want."

Castiel had an idea what it took for Gabriel to offer that, and how much it could potentially mean for him to be able to introduce at least one brother from his original family to the children that made up his new one. There was really only one answer he could give. "I would be honored," he said, watching how the tension flowed out of Gabriel with those words and only then understanding how he had been bracing himself to have the offer rejected.

Castiel had learned from Dean that there were some times when it was best to ignore the more powerful emotions and judged that this might be just such a timem so he gestured at the alcoves they were passing and asked, "Do you know what these items are?"

"Some of them," Gabriel answered, becoming more animated again. "Most of them actually. Lugh likes showing off so I've got the ten cent tour before." He then proceeded, without any more prompting, to give Castiel the same, pointing out objects as they passed them and relating what he knew about their purpose and history. He was a surprisingly good storyteller, and the rest of the trip through the vault and up to the third level passed quickly. Castiel was actually a little surprised when they reached their destination at the end of the corridor on that level.

Gabriel stopped talking mid-sentence as he looked at the recessed alcove that was now only feet away. "That's it," he said, voice suddenly hushed.

Inside the darkness cut into the wall there floated a key. It was bright silver in color and very ornate with decorations in the shape of a pentacle and a cross worked into its filigree. It was also glowing softly with power, a power they both could sense from this distance.

"So what do you think?" Gabriel asked, though he hadn't taken his eyes off the Key.

"Very pretty," Castiel said. "The symbolism you chose is nicely meaningful. Though I am a little surprised you didn't choose to make it a horn instead."

Gabriel gave a low laugh. "I was trying to fly under the radar, remember? If I did create a horn as a relic, I might as well have signed my name to it. To say it would have been a bit conspicuous would've been an understatement. As it is, even with the Key, the feel of my grace probably would've given the game up if any angel who'd met me before had gotten close enough." Now he did move his head to glance over at Castiel with a wry smile. "It's not easy to pretend to be something you're not. And even harder pretending to not be something you are."

"Maybe we're all more than one thing," Castiel replied.

Gabriel's smile widened slightly. "Maybe." He stepped closer, stopping when he was right in front of the alcove and its softly shining occupant. "I'm not sensing any defenses on it." He glanced over his shoulder at Castiel. "You?"

Castiel stepped closer as well and reached out with all his senses to the Key and its resting spot. There was a jangle of bright power from the Key itself, but everything around it seemed perfectly normal and inert. "No," he replied, but couldn't help but frown as he said it, which did not go unnoticed.

"What is it?" Gabriel asked sharply.

"I'm... not sure," Castiel said slowly. "There doesn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary here save for the Key. But..."

"But?"

"I have a very bad feeling about this."

Gabriel snorted. "Thank you, Luke Skywalker."

"I don't understand that reference," Castiel replied a little absently, as most of his attention was on the Key and its surroundings, trying to figure out what was... pinging his angel-dar as Dean would have said.

"Of course you don't. Seriously, bro. As soon as I've got my grace back and we're out of here, we've having movie night. Can't have my little brother walking around with all these gaps in his cultural notice."

"I'll look forward to it," Castiel replied, still unable to determine why he had a bad feeling. Well aside from, "It's too easy."

"What?" Gabriel asked.

"This," Castiel gestured at the Key and the corridor around them. "Lugh very obviously doesn't want to give up your Key, yet when he allowed us to continue searching, we were able to find it with hardly any trouble at all. That doesn't feel right."

Gabriel frowned. "You think it's too easy?"

"Don't you?"

Gabriel's frown got deeper. "Maybe. But..." His gaze was already being drawn back to the Key. "Maybe he's just trying to save face? Your lips say 'no' but your eyes say 'yes' type thing?"

"You want it to be easy," Castiel said gently, the hope in his brother's voice making that all too clear.

"We're due, don't you think? I mean, considering how the exact opposite of easy things have been since, oh, the apocalypse tried to start. Just statistically speaking, _something_ should turn out to be simple." He was almost pleading with Castiel to say it was.

"Gabriel..."

"It's my _grace_ , Castiel! It's who I am, and I don't know how to be me without it. And it's right there! Easy or hard, I can't just walk away, not when it's right in front of me." As if that made the decision for him, Gabriel turned back to the Key, took a deep breath and plunged his hand into the dark space it was floating in.

 _His grace._ With a moment's blazing insight, Castiel suddenly realized what was missing and what it meant. Even with archangel reflexes, he was barely in time to yank Gabriel back when the Key burst into flame. The flames cackled around the Key for a bare second then exploded outward, and Castiel had to risk flying with Gabriel in the enclosed space of the vault corridor to keep them from getting engulfed.

But whatever the flames were, they were far faster than they had any right to be, and between that and the protections on this place, Castiel found he couldn't outrun it or just transport them out. With the fire right on his heels, he did the only thing left that he could think of. He pushed Gabriel into one of the alcoves, shielding them both with his wings and hoping his grace was up to the task of protecting them from the destruction the fire's roar was promising.

It turned out it was, but only just. They both survived, but Castiel's primary feathers were distinctly singed when he lowered his wings and pulled back to check Gabriel over. "Are you all right?"

Gabriel coughed, looking both shaken and disgusted. "Yeah. You?" His gaze seemed to seek out every inch of Castiel as if searching for any damage.

"Singed but otherwise unharmed," Castiel replied.

A little tension seemed to leave Gabriel at that. "How did you know?" he asked, leaning back against the corridor wall and just breathing. He looked... different than Castiel had ever seen him look before. He looked defeated. Castiel did not like it at all.

"Your grace," he replied. "You made the Key as a relic, infused it with your essence. It should've felt like you. Archangel you. And while that key was radiating a great deal of power, none of it felt like your grace."

If anything, Gabriel slumped even more at that. "I couldn't even tell. You'd think I'd be able to. I mean, after all, it's _my_ grace. It was a part of me forever. But now I can't even sense whether it's right in front of me or not."

After a moment's hesitation, Castiel reached out and laid a hand on Gabriel's shoulder. "We will get your Key back. And I will do everything that's in my power to restore you. I promise."

Gabriel looked at him for a long moment, then reached up and squeezed his wrist tightly and nodded. "Okay."

Castiel returned the nod and stepped back. Gabriel stayed where he was for a moment longer but then, with a frown, started pacing back and forth, almost like a caged tiger. And he started speaking, as if thinking out loud. "So that was rather obviously a decoy, meant to fool me into thinking it was the real thing. Which it most certainly did. But it wasn't just a decoy, it was a trap. If you hadn't been with me, hadn't figured it out in time to get some distance and hadn't been able to shield us both... we'd be dead." Gabriel stopped dead and looked at Castiel, the look of revelation in his eyes. "That son of a bitch just tried to kill us."

Castiel nodded. "Yes." He had thought that had been rather obvious, but the way Gabriel was acting perhaps not.

"He tried to _kill_ me!" Gabriel began pacing again, this time looking positively outraged. "There's playing fast and loose with an oath, and then there's blowing it completely out of the water. This? This is beyond even that."

He snapped a piece of chalk into existence and began sketching out a combination of Celtic, Norse and Enochian symbols on the flood in front of them.

"What are you doing?" Castiel asked, as he cocked his head to one side, trying to figure out what it was that Gabriel was writing.

"We need to have a little chat with Lugh. By now I'm sure he knows that his little trap didn't work so he's not about to come willingly when I call. So we're going to have to _compel_ him to grace us with his presence and to hold him here once he does."

Castiel watched as Gabriel added symbols for protection and barrier. "That is... a trickster's trap?"

Gabriel paused long enough to grin up at him. "Doesn't really have a name, but that's as good as any. Works like a devil's trap would on your usual demon, only with bonus summoning ritual incorporated. It yanks him here and then keeps him here until we decide to let him go." He finished off one last rune with a flourish and straightened up. "Here goes nothing."

As Castiel watched, Gabriel reeled off some complicated incantation in Gaelic finishing up with, "Get your ass over here right now, Lugh, and I am not fucking kidding."

As unorthodox as it was, it had the desired effect. There was a sudden stirring of air through the corridor where they stood, like an errant breeze had found its way down the passage and between one second and the next, Lugh was there, standing in the center of the trap Gabriel had sketched out.

Lugh did not look worried. Indeed, if Castiel had to put a name to the expression Lugh was wearing, it would have to be weary exasperation. He sighed and looked at Gabriel like he was a particularly slow child. "Was all this really necessary, Gabriel?"

"You tried to kill us!" Gabriel shot back. "So yeah, I'm thinking it's pretty damned necessary."

"Oh, very well, if it makes you feel better." Lugh crossed his arms over his chest."What is it you want?"

Gabriel mirrored the pose. "How 'bout you start with why you tried to kill us?"

"I wasn't actually trying to kill you," Lugh said, directing his words at Castiel. "I wasn't expecting you at all, so I had no plans one way or the other."

"So it was just me then," Gabriel said, pulling Lugh's attention back to him.

"Truthfully? Yes," Lugh admitted, not flinching or looking away from Gabriel when he did.

" _Why?_ " Gabriel demanded. "I thought we were _friends_!" Suddenly it made sense to Castiel why his brother was taking this so personally.

"Were we?" Lugh asked, manner gone cold. "From the moment we met, you lied to me -- you lied to everyone. Pretending to be something you're not, pretending to be one of us. How can we possibly be friends when I never really knew you?"

That actually seemed to take Gabriel back a bit. "It's not like I had a choice," he said, frowning. "If I hadn't taken on a new identity, my family would have-"

"Hunted you down, yes, I know. And probably anyone who happened to be too near you at the time would've ended up as collateral damage. That's my point." There was passion in Lugh's words now, and a restrained anger radiating off him like waves of heat. "Your kind, your _family_ , think you're above the rest of the world. The fallout of your petty squabbles and family feuds spills over onto humans and gods alike, and you just don't give a damn."

Gabriel shook his head vehemently. "That's not me," he insisted fiercely. "That's never been me."

"Oh, but it is," Lugh said. "Or, at least, was. You came down here to play your little game of hide and seek and inserted yourself into a story that you weren't meant to be a part of. But the story changed and flowed to accommodate you and now you are. You wanted to be Loki the trickster?" He spread his hands. "Congratulations, you've got your wish. Be content with that and leave, and perhaps what was a lie in the past can become the truth in the future."

"I can't do that," Gabriel said, sounding honestly regretful. "I'm sorry, Lugh, but however much Loki's become a part of me, it's not _me_. Like it or not, I'm Gabriel, the archangel. I can't turn my back on that."

"And that's why," Lugh said. "With all the destruction your kind has rained down on the Earth and both humanity and the gods, how can I in good conscience allow there to be one more when I can prevent it? I do not want to be in a position later where I will have the blood of my fellow gods on my hands. There won't be another Elysium Fields if I have anything to say about it."

"Have you suddenly become an idiot?" Gabriel asked, getting exasperated. "I was fighting on your side at the Elysium Fields and, oh yeah. I _died_ for my troubles. Lucifer was the problem there, not me."

"That time," Lugh said. "But who can say what you would do the next time? No. It is safer for the world if you remain as you are now."

"Or die trying," Castiel said, drawing Lugh's attention to himself. This conversation was not making him think very fondly of the god, and watching the emotions chase themselves across Gabriel's very expressive face was making him like him less and less.

"Yes," Lugh replied firmly. "For the sake of old memories, it wouldn't be my first choice, but I will do what I must to protect myself, my people and this world."

"You don't seem worried that Gabriel will force you to comply," Castiel observed, while Gabriel sputtered beside him.

Lugh shrugged. "I'm not. As things stand, he is my equal, trickster against trickster." He glanced back to Gabriel. "But this is my home ground. You may be able to hold me temporarily, but you can't compel me to cooperate. Not as you are now."

"Do you really want to take that bet?" Gabriel all but growled. Castiel reached out and laid a restraining hand on his shoulder before he could do any of the things he was sure his brother was contemplating.

"You're forgetting something," he said.

"Am I?" Lugh asked with a raised eyebrow.

"You think you can keep the Key from Gabriel because the only way he would have enough power to compel you to give it to him is if he was restored to his true self. Which he needs the Key to do."

"Catch 22," Lugh agreed.

"Except you overlooked something," Castiel said, straightening up to his full height and letting just a bit of his grace shine through. "Gabriel needs an archangel's power to get you to break? He has it. Me."

Gabriel had stilled beside him and was looking at him with wide eyes and the teeniest, tiniest hint of his usual smirk. Lugh, meanwhile, looked uncomfortable for the first time as he regarded Castiel with a frown. "You're not an archangel."

"I wasn't," Castiel said. "But I was killed helping to prevent the apocalypse, and when our Father resurrected me, he gave me a free upgrade."

"He did," Gabriel confirmed, full on grinning now. "Castiel's been making himself Dad's new favorite for the last year or so. Every now and then, Dad doesn't work in such mysterious ways and just does something that's _right_. Castiel's one of them."

Castiel had gradually been letting more and more of his grace shine out as they discussed until now Lugh was having to squint to look at him. Gabriel, Castiel noticed, didn't seem to have that problem. "Is that enough information for you to believe me, or do I have to give you a more practical, hands-on demonstration to prove it?"

Lugh was definitely looking more than uncomfortable now. He tried to take a step back but Gabriel's trap kept him in place. "You think you can bully me? What are you going to do, try torture?"

"I thought I'd first try just asking," Castiel replied. "We don't want any unpleasantness. This doesn't need to get messy any more than it already has. All we want is the Key, and then we'll go. We'll tear this entire place apart if we have to. But we don't want to have to. So, please, Lugh. Where is the Key?"

Lugh pressed his lips tight together as if he was afraid of the answer accidentally slipping out. "I can't just hand it over like that. Not with what's at stake."

"Nothing's at stake except my life!" Gabriel exclaimed. "Dude, when have I ever harmed you or yours in any way? Why do you think I'd start now?"

"You're an angel," Lugh said as if that were reason enough.

Castiel made a show of sighing heavily. "Do you really want to do this the hard way?"

Lugh seemed to brace himself. "Do what you have to. I will do the same. We will see which of us has the strongest will."

Though torture was not and had never been a talent of his, Castiel was not going to back down on this. It was too important. To restore his brother, he would, as Dean would say, suck it up and just do it.

He began to raise his hand, but Gabriel grabbed his arm, halting him. "Wait." He turned back to Lugh. "I don't want this to happen, Lugh, and not just because I considered you my friend, even if you don't consider me to be yours. It's futile. No matter what you do, how long it takes, I'm not leaving here without that Key."

Lugh shook his head. "I can't tell you where it is."

"A compromise then," Gabriel offered. "Let's make it the game you originally wanted it to be. You give us one hint, and we have to find it on our own. Then, when we leave, I give you my oath not to bring harm to you or yours -- Castiel too."

Though he looked tempted, Lugh shook his head. "Angels can't be trusted."

Gabriel rolled his eyes. "Let's cut out the bull crap. You know me. You've known me for centuries. In all that time have you ever known me to go back on my word or break an oath?"

"No," Lugh said grudgingly.

"And I'm not about to start now. Oh, and for the record, it was a _god_ who was deceitful and _invited_ Lucifer to the party at Elysium Fields. I'm the one who stopped the massacre. So who is it who can't be trusted?"

Lugh looked at him for a long moment consideringly. "You stay away from me and mine -- from Ireland entirely."

"Unless something comes up that makes a trip here essential," Gabriel countered. "But I'll send advance notice if it does."

The amendment seemed to actually make Lugh relax some. Castiel thought he knew why. If Gabriel was planning on going back on this oath, he wouldn't care about adjusting it to fit emergencies.

"All right," Lugh finally said. "For old times' sake. But no one hears about this. Ever."

"My lips are sealed," Gabriel said, miming turning a key over his mouth. "And Castiel is naturally closemouthed. Your secret's safe with us."

Lugh gave him the faintest ghost of a smile. "Then you best be off looking for your lucky charm, shouldn't you, boyo?"

Gabriel frowned. "That's your idea of a clue?"

"Take it or leave it. That's all you're getting." Lugh raised an eyebrow in challenge. "Loki's not clever enough to figure it out?"

"Bite me," Gabriel told him.

"Sorry," Lugh said. "You're not my type."

Gabriel glared and began to walk away, and Castiel fell into step at his side, leaving Lugh still trapped behind them. Lugh cleared his throat meaningfully. "Oh, didn't I mention?" Gabriel called back, glancing over his shoulder. "You're staying just where you are until we're finished. Less temptation for you to find a loophole that will let you try to kill us again. We'll let you out once we have the Key." He paused. "That wouldn't make you want to give a better clue now, would it?"

What he got back was a very long, very colorful string of cursing and swearing. "Now that better not be a clue," he chastised cheerfully. "Settle in, make yourself comfortable. We'll be back when we're back."

They headed down the corridor and around a bend, until they were out of sight and earshot of where Lugh was trapped. Gabriel stopped and leaned against the wall with a frown. "Y'know as clues go, this is a lot more obscure than I was hoping for."

"We could have held out, and made him give us an exact location," Castiel suggested, though that would've probably taken at least as long. And been a lot more messy.

"Nah. He's hung his hat so firmly on this whole 'angels are bad' trope that there was no way he was going to straight forward tell us. It would've ended up getting messy and unpleasant and would've gone a long way to proving his point to himself. It was much better to appeal to his trickster nature and give him a guarantee of safety while still leaving him plausible deniability. We just have to, y'know, prove we're more clever than he is."

"Do you have any idea what he could have meant?" Castiel asked.

Gabriel shrugged, running a hand through his hair in frustration. "I assume it means he's hidden it by making it look like something else. But what? Rabbit's foot? Horseshoe? Two-headed coin? Four leaf clover? There's lots of different things people consider lucky charms."

"Indeed," Castiel said."Even cereal."

Gabriel went perfectly still, save for swinging his head around to look at Castiel. "What did you say?"

"There's a cereal called Lucky Charms. Dean made me try it once. It was very.... sweet. I didn't like it."

Gabriel stared at him a minute longer and then suddenly went tearing up the corridor. Castiel was hard pressed to keep up with him, even with the advantage of angelic speed. When he stopped again it was in front of one of the tapestries Castiel had been looking at earlier, the one with the cartoon leprechaun and the bowl of.... _oh_.

Gabriel gave a short bark of laughter and pointed to the cereal box sitting on the stump the leprechaun was using for a table. "That almost qualifies as hiding in plain sight, if it wasn't so completely absurd." Castiel leaned closer and made out the words "Contains New Hidden Key Marshmallows!" emblazoned on the box's front under the name.

"Is this a door like the other tapestry?" Castiel asked.

"Should be," Gabriel replied, eyes now scanning the tapestry's decorative border. "Just need to find the right >ahem

Castiel nodded. "He won't get away," he promised.

Gabriel found what he was looking for down the border on the far side of the tapestry, and he nodded at Castiel. When Castiel nodded back, he traced an intricate symbol in the air and rattled off some rapid fire Gaelic.

Castiel could tell that it had worked when he saw the leprechaun's eyes widen and his hand start to reach for the box. He didn't let him get any further than that, flying into the tapestry and grabbing hold of the leprechaun by his shirt collar, hauling him up off his feet.

The leprechaun responded by cursing a rather impressive blue-streak and squirming violently which only stopped when Castiel got a much better hold on him, pinning his arms to his sides. The cursing however continued.

"Tsk, such language," Gabriel scolded the leprechaun as he walked up to them. "And when you're dressed like the spokesperson of a kids' cereal! Shouldn't you be thinking of the children and setting a good example?"

He got spat at for his troubles and told exactly what he could do with his good example in horrifying, anatomically impossible detail. Gabriel rolled his eyes and snapped up a gag and rope which reduced the swearing and squirming to muffled grunts and a sort of spastic twitching.

Once he was sure the leprechaun was restrained, Castiel dropped him in a patch of nearby clover. "He's certainly creative," he observed as he walked back over to where Gabriel was standing. "I think even Dean would have been impressed by that amount of cursing."

Gabriel snorted. "If they had a contest for most foul-mouthed entities in existence, leprechauns would finish at least in the top three." He was looking down at the box of cereal. "Is it...? This whole area has been infested with so much power, I can't tell."

Castiel stretched out his own awareness, trying to search beyond the ambient high power levels to find... _Yes._ There. That whisper of familiar grace that had been missing from the fake Key. "It's in there," he confirmed.

Gabriel just stared at the box for a moment before reaching out and picking it up. If there was a minute tremor in his hands, Castiel chose not to notice it. "At least nothing caught on fire this time," Gabriel said with a lopsided tiny smile.

"That is definitely a point in our favor," Castiel agreed.

The smile slid off Gabriel's face replaced by a grimace when he opened the box and looked inside. "Not quite as bad as the proverbial needle in a haystack, but still, finding the one fake marshmallow among all the other marshmallows isn't going to be easy."

"Maybe you don't need to," Castiel said, as a plan formed in his mind.

"What do you mean?" Gabriel asked, cocking his head to the side with a frown.

"The whole reason we've been after the Key is so we can use it to restore your grace. But we haven't exactly worked out a method to do it, beyond me using the grace in the Key to kick-start your own. I've been thinking... it might be easier to do from the inside."

Gabriel's frown deepened. "Inside, as in... Castiel, are you suggesting I _eat_ the Key?"

"It is currently a marshmallow," Castiel pointed out.

"Yeah, but...Do you know how much effort it took to make it? To just chew it up and destroy it..."

"Think of it as taking that piece of grace you used to make it back into yourself," Castiel suggested.

Gabriel's frown was not going away. "I've been picturing us actually having the Key and being able to try multiple methods if the first doesn't work. But this... this is a lot more all or nothing than I'm comfortable with."

 _Ah._. His reluctance was finally making sense to Castiel. "I promise you, brother, this will work."

"How can you be so sure?" For the first time Gabriel looked... vulnerable.

"Because," Castiel said, letting nothing but certainty through in his expression and his voice, "I won't let it do anything but succeed."

Gabriel stared at him for a very long moment, searching his face for... Castiel didn't know what. But finally he nodded. "Forgot for a moment that you were the little angel that could. I guess if you can help stop the apocalypse, I can trust you to help me get my grace back."

He poured the cereal into a bowl that was sitting on the tree stump table in the middle of the clearing they were in, then looked around for a moment before shrugging and snapping up a carton of milk to add to it. He then, with only the slightest hesitation, began to eat the cereal with all its marshmallows with a single minded concentration.

"Y'know," Gabriel said around a mouthful, after a few minutes when he was, Castiel estimated, about halfway through, "I suppose it could be worse. I could've had to consume a large quantity of something like boiled turnips. At least this is sweet."

"How did you grow to like eating so much sugar anyway?" Castiel asked curiously.

Gabriel shrugged. "Not really much to it. I tried something; I thought it tasted good. I kept eating it. Not really rocket science. You should give more human foodstuff a chance. You might find something good enough to go back for seconds for too."

"You can add it to the list of things you think I should do when all this is over," Castiel suggested.

Gabriel pointed at him with a finger on the hand that wasn't busy spooning sugary cereal into his mouth. "Don't think I won't."

Castiel reflected that the list in question was getting rather long while he watched Gabriel finished the cereal. He didn't mention anything about it, however. He liked the idea of making plans for things he could do with his brother, whether following through with them was practical or not.

"Okay," Gabriel said, once he'd eaten the last mouthful. "One box of breakfast sugar complete with marshmallows and a relic eaten. Now what?"

"Now, I see what I can do to coax the bit of grace in your Key to grow," Castiel said, closing his vessel's eyes and reaching out with his angel senses.

Even amidst the backdrop of Gabriel's trickster powers and the general power levels of the area they were in, Castiel could sense it. A tiny beacon of familiar energy pulsing in time to a human heartbeat -- Gabriel's, Castiel suddenly realized.

It was an encouraging sign, as was how readily that flicker of grace reacted when Castiel sent a bit of his own towards it, bouncing as if excited and trying to wrap around it to keep it in place. Very much like Gabriel at his most unrestrained.

He fed it a little more energy, felt its reaction and how it began to slowly grow beyond the confines of a relic and latch onto Gabriel's essence.

Gabriel's eyes widened when it did so. "I can feel..." He trailed off, his voice having almost cracked on the last word. He swallowed hard and tried again. "Whatever you're doing, keep doing it. I can feel it working."

Castiel had no intention of stopping, continuing to lend the burgeoning grace some of his own as energy. Now that it was once again attached to the essence of Gabriel, it was growing even faster and Castiel could tell that it was very close to reaching the tipping point, where its growth and rejuvenation would be self-sustaining and beyond his control.

When it did reach that point, Castiel no longer needed angel senses to follow the progress. The glow of Gabriel's renewing grace was visible, lighting up under his skin, starting at the center of his body and quickly sliding outwards towards fingers, toes and the top of his head.

This was different from the one other time he'd seen an angel have their grace restored. With Anna, it had been a maelstrom of grace, an explosion of power so volatile that it had destroyed her human body and several demons that had been too close. With Gabriel's, it was slower, more controlled, filling him up without destroying anything. The difference between pouring water into a pitcher and having it swept away in a flood.

This was made all the more impressive when one realized how much power was involved. Gabriel was an archangel -- one of the original archangels -- and his grace was expanding back to those nigh unlimited levels. It was just doing it slowly enough and controlled enough that aside from lighting Gabriel up like a Christmas tree, there was no outward sign of it happening at all.

At least until the wings appeared.

The smile on Gabriel's face as he unfurled them to their full width and breadth made him glow even more than the grace still sliding like a river running under his skin.

"Damn, it worked!" he crowed, moving so his wings were directly in the path of the slight breeze that existed. He looked over at Castiel, his eyes half-closed with pleasure as his feathers were caressed by the air moving through them. "Are you going to get offended if I say I really didn't expect it to?"

"It was a longshot," Castiel admitted.

"You do seem good with those," Gabriel observed, furling and unfurling his wings rhythmically now. He gave Castiel a smile that was pure happiness. "Thanks."

Castiel found himself returning the smile with one of his own. Whatever happened now, it felt good to see his brother restored and know he had a hand in making it happen. "You're welcome."

Gabriel stretched his wings out to their full span one last time before rather reluctantly putting them away. "I suppose we better go and let Lugh out now," he said with a sigh. With his restored grace added to the inherent power levels of a trickster, he seemed to have no trouble snapping them both back to where they had left Lugh trapped, even though that way of travel had proven impossible to both of them before in Lugh's domain.

Lugh immediately seemed to understand the significance of this as he eyed Gabriel warily. "You found it." It wasn't a question.

"We did," Gabriel confirmed. He shook his head grinning. "I gotta tell ya, Lugh, I've come up with some crazy things over the years, but that's gotta be up there with the craziest. Hiding it in a box of breakfast cereal? Really?"

"Make something absurd enough and you can hide it in plain sight," Lugh said with a shrug, eerily echoing Gabriel's earlier opinion on the subject . "Is Stuart all right?"

Gabriel frowned. "Stuart?"

"The Key's guardian."

"You mean the little foul-mouthed kiddie commercial reject?" Gabriel waved away Lugh's concern. "He's fine, just trussed up like a Christmas goose."

Lugh nodded at that and then straightened to his full height as if visibly steeling himself. "So what happens now?"

Gabriel exchanged a confused look with Castiel. "What do you mean what happens now?"

"I not only double-crossed you, I tried to kill you while I did so. You have me at your mercy, and now you have your full powers back. I suspect this is where there will be payback of some sort?"

"Now I don't know," Gabriel all but drawled out. "What do you think, Castiel? Should we get on this whole payback thing?"

Castiel cocked his head as he made a show of observing Lugh. "He did cause us significant inconvenience."

"He did," Gabriel agreed. "And he tried to cause even more. Being dead? Pretty much the most inconvenient thing _ever_. Take it from someone who knows."

"It does tend to put a crimp in your day's plans," Castiel added.

"Not to mention the wardrobe! So yeah, maybe he does deserve some payback." Gabriel raised his hand causing Lugh to flinch, but then he paused. "On the other hand, we did get what we came for. Eventually."

"True," Castiel put in. "And no one got hurt."

"Other than my feelings," Gabriel amended.

"Other than his feelings," Castiel echoed.

"Castiel's still getting the hang of this whole emotion thing, or you probably would've hurt his feelings too."

"It was more I had no expectations," Castiel corrected. "I've never met him, so I had no expectation that he would keep his word to you."

"I stand corrected," Gabriel said. "Still, all's well that ends well. And I did make that oath to leave you and yours alone once I got my mojo back. So..." He raised his hand and snapped, and all the lines and symbols that made up the trap disappeared.

Lugh stayed where he was and gave Gabriel a serious look. "Point made. Perhaps I should have had more faith in our past relationship, but with the carnage your kind has rained on gods and humanity alike, it felt far too risky."

"Hey, I get it. I'll be the first to admit that most of my brothers are dicks." He looked over at Castiel, eyes warm as he smiled a little. "But not all of them. And, I hope, not me. You can't always judge a book by its cover. Or its PR. You just might want to keep that in mind in the future."

With that he snapped Castiel and himself away from Tara.

*****

Castiel looked around at their new location with interest. It appeared to be a luxury apartment, penthouse judging from the impressive view out the large glass windows and door that took up the majority of one wall. The furnishings all seemed to be not only very expensive but comfortable and everything was in very bright and happy colors.

"Welcome to my humble abode," Gabriel said, holding his arms wide as if to encompass everything in there. "I haven't been home in a while -- what with being dead and all, but it looks like the maid service's been kept up." He grinned at Castiel and bounced a little on his toes. "So what you say we celebrate my re-angelfying with a night of food, drink and catching you up on pop culture references?"

Castiel smiled slightly in return; he really couldn't help it, a Gabriel that was this happy and enthusiastic was rather contagious. "I would be honored," he said, and meant it. He only wished he could. "But the state Heaven is in at the moment... I've probably stayed away too long as it is."

It was almost comical how fast the smile slid from Gabriel's face at that. "Oh. Yeah, sure. You're probably right. With Dad still playing walkabout, they need someone competent to keep everything and everyone in line. And you're the angel for the job."

Castiel shrugged. "Someone had to." He really should go, but he hesitated on leaving. He might have spent a great deal of the time with Gabriel helping him find his Key and restore his grace in various levels of exasperation, but it had also been more fun than he could remember having since leaving Dean and returning to Heaven. More than that, he liked having a brother who he was on the same page with, even if he didn't grasp what Gabriel was talking about half the time. He didn't want to give that all up now.

"Perhaps," he said slowly, remembering one of Dean's phrases, "I could take a raincheck?"

"Seriously?" Gabriel asked, the light returning to his eyes as quickly as it had disappeared.

"You're correct in that I need assistance in my understanding of human pop culture, and I'd very much like to meet your children," Castiel told him. "And... it would be nice to have something to look forward to when dealing with everything back home."

And there was the smile back. "Sure," Gabriel said. "Anytime."

Castiel nodded. "I will see you soon then," he said and prepared to leave.

Only to be stopped by Gabriel calling his name. "Thanks again," he said, when Castiel paused in his leave-taking. "I know, in some ways, it might not seem like much, given the way I've been living and all, but getting my grace back was more important than I can put into words. It's like getting _me_ back, in some ways more than I've had for centuries. And I couldn't have done it without you. So... y'know, thanks."

"It was my pleasure," Castiel replied with a smile, meaning it. The smile lasted all the way back to Heaven and halfway through the first crisis that awaited him.

*****

All things considered, Castiel reflected as he failed to duck Raphael's latest blow and went flying backward to collide violently with the wall of the council chamber, he would much rather be back in Ireland worried about getting squished into jelly.

This wasn't the first time since his return that the differences between himself and Raphael had exploded into violence, but it did seem to be the most serious as every fiber of Castiel's grace fought to hold onto awareness in the face of the damaging punishment that Raphael was dealing.

He struggled to get his feet under him and stand without much success as Raphael slowly walked over, the blade in his hand reflecting the light. It seemed like Raphael had decided that this skirmish was going to be the last in their ongoing disagreement about what direction Heaven should take, and even though Castiel was seriously doubting at this point if he could stop him, he at the very least was going to make the other archangel work to take his life.

If he had to go down, Castiel would go down fighting.

But then something appeared directly in Raphael's path, and he slipped on it and fell. Castiel looked closer at the object; it seemed to be... a banana peel?

The sound of clapping drew both his and Raphael's attention to the doorway of the council chamber. There, standing with that oh so familiar smirk on his face, was Gabriel.

"Gotta hand it to you, Raph, as prat falls go, you always were a natural. Nice to know some things never change."

"Gabriel." Raphael stared at him. "You're alive."

"Yep. Kinda old news though, bro. I've been back for a while now. What's it been, Castiel, three weeks? A month?" Gabriel didn't take his eyes off Raphael even as he brought Castiel into the conversation.

"Three and a half, I believe," Castiel replied, not letting on how stunned he was to see Gabriel here, in the center of where Heaven had been governed from since their Father had left.

"Three and a half weeks," Gabriel continued. "I would've thought you'd've heard about my dramatic return by now. Oh, but that would've involved talking to Castiel instead of trying to turn him into a pin cushion, which I can see is a hard thing for you to do."

"You are in league with this one, brother?" Raphael asked seeming shocked and dismayed at this revelation. "Why?"

"You mean why am I backing Castiel instead of you and your apocalypse revisited plan?" Gabriel shook his head and whistled. "You really are out of the loop, aren't you? Or did you miss the part where Lucifer _killed_ me when I was trying to stop the apocalypse the first time around? Damn ;straight I'm on Castiel's side. Once was more than enough for that shit; we certainly don't need a repeat."

Raphael frowned quellingly. "Destiny has said that the apocalypse _will_ happen. As it is, written so shall it be."

"Destiny, schmestiny," Gabriel scoffed. "Destiny's what you make of it. Me, I prefer to make of it a buddy movie. More laughs, less clean-up. Or to put it another way, take your apocalypse and shove it up your ass, Raphael."

Electricity was practically sparking in Raphael's eyes, he was so angry. "This isn't over, Gabriel."

"Yeah, it is," Gabriel said, suddenly completely serious. "Unless you think you can take on both of us at once. In which case, bring it on."

For a moment it looked to Castiel like Raphael was actually considering it, but then his better sense seemed to prevail, and he flew off in a swirl of wrath and lightning.

Gabriel walked over to where Castiel was still sitting on the floor and offered him a hand up. "That should keep him in line for a little while at least."

"Thanks," Castiel said, allowing Gabriel to pull him to his feet. "I wasn't expecting you to show up here."

"No one was. I'm like the Spanish Inquisition that way," Gabriel joked, though Castiel was uncertain if he understood the punchline. "You owed me a raincheck, and I got bored waiting."

"My apologies. Things have been.... complicated since I got back." If complicated meant being on the brink of a civil war. Castiel reflected he may be developing a gift for understatement.

"So I see," Gabriel said wryly. "I've been thinking," he continued, perching on one of the conference tables and pulling his legs up underneath him to sit cross-legged on it. "We spent all that effort on getting my angel mojo back. Seems almost a waste to just use it to flit around the Earth partying it up. You think there's room for the prodigal son of archangels to come home?"

"I'm not killing a fatted calf for you," Castiel told him, but he couldn't keep the smile off his face. To have not only an ally but someone who had become a friend...

"Good," Gabriel replied. "I've never been much for fatted calves. Bake me a pie and we'll call it even."

"You are as bad as Dean," Castiel said.

Gabriel smirked widely. "Oh, I'm so very much worse than Dean. You have no idea."

He really shouldn't. There was too much that had to be done and done immediately. But that didn't stop Castiel from raising a challenging eyebrow at his brother. "Prove it."

"Oh, Castiel..." Gabriel's smile was bright enough to light up all of Heaven. "I thought you'd never ask." He raised a hand to snap them away. "Hold onto your halo. This is going to be good."


End file.
